


Like a Sea of Fire Mixed with Glass

by Maerhys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other, Podfic Available, outsider point of view, permanent disfigurement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 11:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5625304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maerhys/pseuds/Maerhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>A year after saving the world from Lucifer, they retrace old roads, old scars.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Sea of Fire Mixed with Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Post-season 5 alternative reality. Title from Revelations 15:2. Inspired by Rednecks by Martín Espada. Podfic by Painted Pain available [here](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/like-sea-of-fire-mixed-with-glass). This story fulfills _Arizona_ for my 50 States of Supernatural challenge

"Sofía, you see the _Gazette_ today?” Jimmy calls out, hands wrist-deep in the congealed grease from last night's closing gone wrong.

She kneels, crucifix swinging away from her neck, at the booth closest to the kitchen and scrubs at the Formica tabletop with the cleaner that stains her fingernails. She goes to holler back when a spring slips out of the torn vinyl and stuffing, scratches her bare shin and draws blood.

"Goddamnit," she whispers and then crosses herself for the blasphemy.

The Ash Fork quarry's smoke rises, eats at the yolk-colored sun, and shifts the sky from blue to gray. She doesn't bother with the blinds, no glare off the smudged windows this morning. Sofía limps into the kitchen for a band-aid. Jimmy's still scraping at the grease, a bowl of eggs, white shells speckled brown sit next to him on the counter; room temperature eggs make the fluffiest omelets. Or, so he says.

She slaps the Band-Aid over the scratch, fingers the frayed hem of the waitress uniform. All pale pink like something from the 1950s but it's been rinsed out too many times to be anything but dishrag pastel of unknown original color now.

"Take a look at the _Gazette_ , I left it on the stool.” Jimmy says as he whips and mixes, and he doesn't pause for her to pick up the newspaper before he goes on. "Can you believe that? Says they don't know but it might be random electrical fire or arson. Even if it was an electrical, still gonna blame someone with half the street burned down. Reminds us all of the big one back in seventy-seven."

Sofía nods, folds the paper into a square so the inside pages don't fall out. Front page, splashy color photo of a clapboard house with fire eating at the windows and smoke streaming out and around like a black river after a heavy rain. She skims: no fatalities, one in critical condition but no other details. Rundown neighborhood, across the quarry river. She reads that he – the survivor – is an unnamed Good Samaritan, who ran into to save a child but there was no one there.

"No one died, thank the Lord," she says. "Too bad, really. You been over there lately, Jimmy?"

"Naw. I try to keep out the old neighborhood. All kinda strange stuff happens over there. My granddaddy used to swear the whole main street was haunted. Then there’s been all sorts of tragedy since late oh-nine, practically apocalyptic at times."

Sofía nods, distracted by the photo of the flames eating the splintered wood and chipped paint and how the shards of glass are frozen in the autumn winds fanning the fire. She rubs at the plastic of the band-aid on her shin and thinks of scripture, leans into the wall next to the altar of cans. Baptism of fire, rebirth. She'll pray for the survivor, it's the least she can do before the breakfast rush.

— — —

The white heat fades into the low-cut flagstones and the following September is twin to the last, little more than clouds heavy with unshed rain and sand-swept dryness that holds on with both hands. Sofía buses the table near the kitchen; she palms the industrial tape on the vinyl seat of the booth so that it continues to stick and lock away stuffing and springs from tender skin. She has three tables of regulars who sip at their coffee while scanning the morning news or scrape at their empty plates with bent fork tines.

Jimmy's out back on his cigarette break when they walk in. Two men, mussed hair and shabby clothes, maybe tourists, Sofía decides with a glance, definitely too many layers to be local. She's behind the counter, adding up receipts and subtracting the minutes until breakfast bleeds into lunch. Paying them no mind, too busy combining the tips with her hourly, (remember to carry the one), she shoos them over to the booth with the taped vinyl and chipped Formica tabletop. Sofía slips in a _welcome, be right with you_ from across the counter before pocketing the roll of bills and leaving the pile of quarters next to the register.

The quiet unnerves her, the lack of clanking silverware and dishes, rustling newspapers, and bickering about the Sun Devils and their latest spread. The other diners are eerily unspoken, lax against the backs of their chairs or slightly slumped into their tables. She pauses at the counter, surveys the dining room, and jumps slightly when the back door slams shut. Jimmy's washing up and back at the griddle, everything in its place. Yanking on her ponytail, Sofía grabs her order pad and rambles over to the twosome at the booth. They sit side-by-side instead of across from one another, (like Noah's Ark, she muses), with the shorter man (but still over six feet) in the leather jacket sitting on the edge but turned toward someone a bit taller, mop of hair long enough to cover most of his face and brush the collar of his hooded sweatshirt. They sense her, but it's like Sofía is not even here.

"Come on, it's your idea to come back here. We're doing this. I know you don't want the double meat platter but if you don't order, I will get you three kinds of pork and not even a rind of fruit," Leather Jacket says.

Hoodie doesn't look up from the menu but he shifts toward Leather Jacket as he teases Hoodie about ordering. She hears him but it's not meant for her.

"Eggs, Dean, okay? Two eggs, toast, side of fruit." He continues to stare at the menu and fold himself into Leather Jacket’s – Dean's – side.

 _Dean_. She pegged him for a John or a Daniel but when he smiles at Hoodie she can see how Dean works just as well.

"Okay, Sam," he says and slings an arm around Hoodie's – Sam's – shoulders even as he turns back to her.

Sofía taps her pencil's point against the pad. It's her diner, as much as anything is ever hers, but she's the interloper here and it feels like a pebble in her shoe, all rub and wrong.

Dean gives the menu a last cursory look and rattles off, "Two scrambled eggs with white toast and jelly, side of whatever you have fresh for the fruit plate and an order of the house hash with fried eggs. Two coffees."

Sofía nods. "That'll be up in about ten minutes but I'll get those coffees right out to you."

He smiles at her, wide and the faint lines at the corners his green eyes crinkle, but he turns back to Sam before she reciprocates. Sofía moves in her rote pattern to the kitchen window, calling out the order to Jimmy and then over to the dishwasher crate of mugs. The coffee pot is near to empty, a muddy swirl of grounds and bitter brew. She swaps out the carafes and starts a new pot while taking a moment to check out _Dean and Sam_. She whispers their names into the hand cupping her mouth as she fakes a cough. She can't see around Dean, he's seated so that he's the mountain holding the sky up – and that's how he looks at Sam. Sam is the sky, vast and familiar, and Dean's close but he never manages to breach the blue. She chides herself for giving into dramatics; this isn't one of her grandmother's _telenovelas_.

The diner is still, pulled taut like a rubber band near breaking. The patrons look but do not let their gazes linger at the back booth. They peer over the edge of the newspaper or twist around in the opposite direction to not look. Sofía eyes them, sizing all of them up. She knows every one of them: construction worker, immigrants' rights attorney and her paralegal, newlyweds just back from Nebraska. They order their "regular" each visit, sip at the hot coffee until the sun breaks over the ripples of smog, and tip her with crisp bills instead of pocket change.

When she sees, she likens the feeling to having the wind knocked out of her – a basketball to the gut, but she doesn't spill coffee over the lips of the mugs she carries. Dean leans back just so and Sam turns to him, twisting his hips, (jeans, Sofía notes, jeans and a tee shirt peeks out of the hoodie), and runs a hand across his brow so that the shaggy hair falls back to reveal his profile. Her stomach turns, bile churns up as she stops, stares. It's not disgust. She searches for the word: _grief_. Sofía sets the cups down carefully, not looking up from the rotation of her hands. Coffee down, point out the sugar packets, make fists, jam them into the small pockets of the uniform's smock-skirt.

Behind the counter, and then back into the belly of the kitchen, she hears Jimmy talking at her but all she knows is _fire_. Fire. It must have been fire. Sofía stoops into a crouch, wondering. _who are they?_ Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean, and the names roll of her tongue easy as if she's sucking on a sugar cube. They're no one to anyone else but each other, maybe; and not for the first time she thinks that she's never seen someone as protective as Dean in his worn brown leather. She guesses that they might be brothers. Big brother growls at anyone who looks the wrong way at his baby brother, except for the intimacy in their hushed tones, the wisp-touches at the crook of the elbow, hand on the knee sliding to the hip. Not brothers. Sofía saw Sam in pieces: slender fingers, mop of hair curling at the ends, and then his face. So haunted, his hollow eyes that might burn out like ash after a fire if Dean lets him go.

"Fí, you listening at all? Your plates for the booth are up and cooling as you twiddle your thumbs," Jimmy grumbles, stepping towards her with his spatula waving in the air.

Nodding, she pulls herself up, smoothes down the skirt of her uniform, tangles the chain of her crucifix around her index finger, and slides it under her dress. Two plates sit under the heating light for her at the counter. She grabs both, along with ketchup and Tabasco, and slinks toward the booth. Dean is leaning back into the booth, staring straight ahead at the dining room, ready to take on anyone who looks their way. Sam curls into himself, wedges his hips into the perpendicular space between the wall and the vinyl backing, his knee crooked and slung carelessly over Dean's thigh. Most of her regulars aren't staring, but she sees the occasional gaze linger over Sam's face and down to his collarbone.

She slides the plates in front of them and pastes on a smile. Mentions the ketchup and Tabasco, and asks, "Can I get you anything else?" She clears away the cold coffee and promises to bring back refills. Sofía stops at the counter, she just wants to understand why she can't look away - why her regular, everyday customers seem as enamored, if not as grief-stricken, as she is. They all know tragedy: loss of parents and children, jobs and homes, working all day to take the bus across town to work all night. Mundane and daily, it dwells in their minds or in the lint of uniform pockets. This is more than curiosity, it's a puzzle that no one has the pieces to, always a trick of the dice, a game lost. It's the unknown, not the charred skin raking down dimpled cheeks, ravishing his jaw bone, and digging into flesh as the scars dip deep under the layers of cotton. The unknown is the abyss in Dean's eyes when he looks at Sam, and he can't see anyone else. The unknown is Sam's rotation around Dean, shoving into his space and back again like smoke twirling in and through cracks, through crevices. Her grief, she wonders, how much of it is about not knowing that kind of steady devotion?

Somehow she drops off the fresh coffee and makes it over to the construction worker's vacated table. She scrapes her tip off the edge, into her pocket, and begins stacking the dishes. The air conditioner clicks on and she listens for Jimmy's rattling and telltale clatter that lunch will be up soon. She checks on the other tables, all silent and reposed behind newspapers, manilla folders, textbooks, and checkbooks. All of their eyes wander to the back booth, at the pair of strangers, sitting side by side. Sofía watches Dean look over the rim of his raised coffee mug and glare. It's hard, disconcerting, and it hits her square in the chest. Dangerous. But the patrons only look on, swallow hard, and push back the lump in their throats. Sam anchors their fears to this diner, they all want to look away politely and then sneak a peek. All of them thinking that a look is the same as a piece in this broken puzzle.

Sofía begins to worry that she'll be cleaning up blood and broken glass before the end of the breakfast. Instead, Dean leans into Sam, turns just so that he brushes the hair from Sam's eyes with his calloused hand. The right side of Sam's face is mottled purple, pitted with deep scars that run from his temple to the top of his shoulder and farther down. Dean moves in so that their chests are pressed flush and he peppers kisses from Sam's brow to his jawbone. Relaxing into the touch, Sam falls forward into Dean's brushing lips and smiles. Sofía watches Dean's hand tangle in Sam's hair as Sam rests his hands on Dean's hips. She turns back to the table covered in crumpled napkins and crusts from burnt toast. They're too much like prayer in a vacant church, lips pressed to damage, kisses that won't make it all better. Sofía pivots, pushes the dirty dishes onto her forearms, and balances the stack against her chest. She sees them from the corner for her eye and chances to look at the pair straight on. Foreheads press together, light kisses between pauses, and a murmur as Dean's lips to the curve of Sam's ear. She can't see their eyes but somehow she knows that they burn like the base flame of a pilot light, dark slivers of heat sparking between them.


End file.
